Imaginary vampires, imagined Jews

The practice of depicting Jews as drinkers of blood has been common for centuries.

By ALLAN NADLER

July 17, 2011 22:46

Allan Nadler 58.
(photo credit: Courtesy)

The writer is a professor of religious
studies and director of the program in Jewish studies at Drew University. This
article was first published by Jewish Ideas Daily (www.jewishideasdaily.com),
and is reprinted with permission.

Eighteen ninety seven was a watershed year in Jewish history. The first Zionist
Congress convened in a grand hotel in Basel, Switzerland. With much less pomp,
the Yiddisher Arbeter Bund, the Jewish Labor Movement, was clandestinely founded
in a Vilna basement (socialist movements being illegal under Tsarist
rule).

In New York, Der Forverts, the world’s largest-circulation and
longest-running Yiddish newspaper, began publication.

Meanwhile, in
Odessa, the Hebrew-language Ha- Shahar, the first and most influential Zionist
journal, was founded under the editorship of Ahad Ha’am. And now, thanks to
Blood Will Tell, an engaging and insightful new study by Sara Libby Robinson,
Jewish historians may consider adding a surprising entry to this list of 1897
events: the publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

While never explicitly
identified as a Jew, the figure of Dracula – and vampires more generally –
encompassed an array of anti-Semitic stereotypes: rootless, of East European
origin, dark-complected, and lusting after the money/blood of others. Assessing
a wide range of themes in which blood and vampirism were evoked in
late-19thcentury European “scientific” thought (Social Darwinism and criminology
in particular), Robinson argues that Stoker’s depiction of Dracula exploited
widespread anxieties about the dangers posed by the flood of Yiddish-speaking
immigrants to Great Britain.

DRACULA’S FEATURES are “stereotypically
Jewish... [his] nose is hooked, he has bushy eyebrows, pointed ears, and sharp,
ugly fingers.” As for his behavior, Robinson situates Dracula in the realm of
fin-de-siècle national chauvinism, which viewed non-Anglo-Saxons – and Jews in
particular – as dangerous interlopers, loyal only to their alien tribe. “Like
many immigrants, Dracula has made great efforts to acculturate himself to his
new country and to blend in with the rest of the population, through studying
its language and customs... [his] greatest concern is whether his mastery of
English and his pronunciation would brand him as a foreigner.” Likewise, Stoker
mines anxieties over Jewish dual loyalty. The one identified person whose aid
Dracula enlists in escaping Britain is a German Jew named Hildesheim, “with a
nose like a sheep.”

Robinson asserts that the purpose of her study is to
widen the focus away from Dracula. She calls attention, often brilliantly, to
the frequent appearance of vampiric metaphors and blood-related anxieties
beginning two decades before Stoker’s work appeared, up through the First World
War. She marshals evidence from dozens of German, French and British authors for
allusions to perceived political and social threats evoking the fear of
vampirism. Additionally, she casts a fine eye on some 30 illustrations culled
from satirical journals such as the German Kladderadatsch, the English Punch,
and the American Puck and Harper’s Weekly.

Nevertheless, Dracula makes an
appearance in every chapter, and is cited more often than any other single work.
The only author who receives more attention than Stoker is Émile Zola – for good
reason, given his work’s sharply critical commentary on the political and social
trends of his day.

Robinson’s approach to her sources is thematic and
synthetic. She mines texts for their appropriation of blood and vampire
metaphors, engaging neither in literary analysis of her sources nor in
biographical studies of their authors. Robinson’s wide range shows precisely how
malleable the accusation of vampirism had become by the early 20th century. On
the economic front, Jews were vilified as frequently for being capitalist
blood-suckers as they were for being socialist revolutionaries feeding on the
social vitality of Old World Europe. The mythology about Jews and blood was
protean enough to fit the contours of the nationalistracist, pseudo-scientific
and religious theories of the day. In that last realm, medieval Christian
mythology about Jews and blood was most infamously manifest in the notorious
blood libel.

The synthetic approach is mostly suited, but its perils are
nowhere more evident than in Robinson’s references to Max Nordau and his
controversial work Degeneration in the context of a discussion of Social
Darwinist anti- Semitism. Robinson oddly introduces Nordau as a “German
intellectual,” making him sound much more deracinated than he was. Readers
unfamiliar with the man called “Herzl’s rabbi” will almost certainly come away
with the notion that Nordau was some German, anti- Semitic social
Darwinist.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Since his first,
stirring address to the Zionist Congress in that momentous year 1897, Nordau was
the most influential exponent of practical Zionism until his death in 1923.
Robinson never even alludes to Nordau’s status as a founding father of Zionism –
an omission rendered doubly bizarre given her subsequent extended treatment of
the Zionist aim of strengthening the Jewish body. Using Herzl’s utopian novel
Altneuland as her main source, she ignores Nordau’s more salient classic essay,
“Muskeljudentum” (Muscular Judaism).

Notwithstanding this certainly
inadvertent distortion, Robinson has written a provocative book that will
heighten our awareness of blood metaphors. As is proper, she reserves her
observations about the contemporary relevance of her research to a brief
mention, in the book’s conclusion of recent depictions of Jews as
vampires.

(Most chillingly, one cartoon casts former Israeli prime
minister Ariel Sharon as “Sharoncula,” about to sink his canine teeth into the
neck of an innocent Arab girl.) BUT TOO many discussions in this fine book
eerily echo distressing recent news stories. Most are all too
obvious.

Late last month, UN High Commissioner for the Middle East
Richard Falk posted a vile cartoon of a rapacious Jewish dog on his
website.

Still, numerous themes examined by Robinson elicit more
surprising analogies. I will mention just one: Robinson’s fascinating discussion
of the link between blood libels and shokhtim, Jewish ritual slaughterers. In
the 1880s, cruelty to animals became a major concern in liberal European
circles, and laws were enacted to regulate animal slaughter. These judicial acts
coincided, in Konitz, Germany, with a notorious blood libel directed at two
local shokhtim, along with rhetoric characterizing Jews as bloodthirsty beasts.
Robinson observes that: “In Germany especially, this campaign veered towards
anti-Semitic slander. According to some advocates of stunning, Jews supposedly
took pleasure in their method of slaughtering, which strengthened their
insensitivity and brutality. Propaganda depicted them as a ‘blooddrinking
people.’ One hears a disturbing echo of this episode in Holland’s introduction,
two weeks ago, of legislation banning both Jewish and Islamic ritual slaughter.
The ostensible motive is the “humanitarian” concern for animal rights – a
“humanitarianism” greatly clarified by Robinson’s study. Just as blood is hidden
from sight until the skin is pierced, the metaphors of blood and vampirism
examined by Robinson all too often cover deep racial hatreds and fears below the
skin of polite public discourse.

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